Saluton. I think I've started reading this subject not from the beginning. But just for the record, I always used Latex for scientific documents (for more than 20 years) and recently (about 5 years ago) I started using latex together with musixtex and everything works fine for me. I never used PMX and I type musixtex commands directly into my latex file with no problem. Basically I write lectures about musical instruments with lots of text and some musical pieces of one or two lines and also whole pieces of one or two pages. Regards, Filipe
2011/9/23 Dirk Laurie <d...@sun.ac.za> > On Fri, Sep 23, 2011 at 05:48:26AM +0200, Don Simons wrote: > > 4. LaTeX has nothing to do with any of this. LaTeX is a special set of > macros > > designed to supposedly make TeX easier to use to produce nice text > documents. > > There is absolutely no requirement to use LaTeX together with MusiXTeX; > in > > fact, it just complicates matters to the extent that you should NEVER use > > them together unless you have a REALLY good reason AND are a pretty > advanced > > user already. > > > > I agree, but let me dot some i's and stroke some t's. > > - TeX is a typesetting program with particularly strong support for > mathematical typesetting, where exact two-dimensional positioning > is important. TeX is idiosyncratic but powerful, abstruse but > conceptually simple, huge but very well supported over almost 30 years. > There is nothing that TeX cannot do, but it is not user-friendly. > - TeX is also a customizable typesetting language that allows the user > to define his own special-purpose instructions for other pernickety > typesetting tasks, like music. Don Knuth (the author of TeX) writes > a special set of macros for every typesetting task he undertakes and > honestly expects other TeX users to be similary diligent. (Instead, > they prefer to abuse existing macro libraries.) > - MusiXTeX is a music typesetting program written in TeX. The need > for exact two-dimensional positioning is even more crucial than in > mathematics, extending to whole pages and even whole scores in which > a change made in one bar can affect decisions on the appearance of > every page. It's not user-friendly any more than TeX itself is, > which is why it's much nicer to use it indirectly via PMX. > - LaTeX is a markup language written in TeX, i.e. a language that > urges you to think abstractly about your document: not "indented" > but "quoted", not "italics" but "emphasized", not "large boldface > with open space above and below" but "section heading", etc. > It's user-friendly (well, compared to TeX it is) and equally well > supported, so it has become a de facto standard among scientists. > > So you see, there are two conflicting tasks: typesetting, in which you > care about minute details of appearance; and markup, in which you say > broadly want you require and the program takes care of the rest. > > If you mix MusiXTeX and LaTeX, the two pull against each other, and you > spend a lot of time compensating for the things LaTeX has done to your > document. The only case where it is useful to mix them, is when a > scientist who knows LaTeX well tries to write a document like the M-Tx > manual, which is in the first place a structured text document, but has > numerous small music inserts. > > But it is even more idiomatic to do it as in the MusiXTeX manual, where > the author did what Knuth wanted and wrote his own special-purpose set > of macros for the purpose. > > Dirk > > ------------------------------- > TeX-music@tug.org mailing list > If you want to unsubscribe or look at the archives, go to > http://tug.org/mailman/listinfo/tex-music > -- Prof. Filipe de Moraes Paiva, http://geocities.ws/prof-fmpaiva<http://www.geocities.ws/prof-fmpaiva>, prof.fmpa...@gmail.com , fmpa...@cbpf.br *Um pandeiro na mão e uma ideia no pé* Mediateca de Línguas Estrangeiras, seção Esperanto Departamento de Física, Colégio Pedro II - U.E. Humaitá II *VIBRO KAJ VIVO* (*numero 3*) http://geocities.ws/prof-fmpaiva/vibrokajvivo<http://geocities.ws/prof-fmpaiva/vibrokajvivo/numero-2/numero-2.html> http://facebook.com/Filipe.de.Moraes.Paiva https://groups.google.com/group/tuta-monda-scienca-historio-esperante
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